Abstract
It is well known that abscisic acid (ABA) is involved in acquisition of desiccation tolerance and dormancy in zygotic embryos. It has been reported that the VP1/ABI3 factor functions as a transcriptional factor on seed specific ABA signal transduction. We had suggested that a carrot homolog of the VP1/ABI3 factor, C-ABI3, is involved in the control of expression of some ABA-inducible genes in carrot zygotic and somatic embryos. Recently, we isolated a new kind of cDNA clone encoding the VP1/ABI3 factor from carrot somatic embryos and named it C-ABI3-like (C-ABI3-L). The expression of C-ABI3-L was observed specifically in embryogenic cells, somatic embryos and developing seeds. Furthermore, in the transgenic non-embryogenic cells showing ectopic expression of C-ABI3-L, the expression of some seed specific ABA-inducible genes was successfully induced by ABA-treatment. These results indicate that C-ABI3-L might function on ABA signal transduction in carrot embryos as well as C-ABI3.
